At the age of 12, Grace LaVigne developed a long-lasting friendship with a St. Paul doctor over an unlikely bonding experience — a thyroid tumor that caused frequent ear infections and could have done far worse.
The LaVigne family of Woodbury credits Dr. Inell Rosario, who runs the Andros Ear Nose and Throat Clinic and Sleep Center in Inver Grove Heights, with saving Grace’s life, and doing so with empathy and humor. “We just really love her,” said Lori LaVigne, Grace’s mother. “It’s like she’s a member of the family.”
So when Grace, now a sophomore at the Hill-Murray Catholic School in Maplewood, learned that Hurricane Dorian had destroyed two island communities in Rosario’s home country of the Bahamas, she knew she had to pay back her favorite doctor.
So began an unexpected journey of discovery for the LaVigne family, and a fundraising effort that has roped in people of Caribbean descent from across Minnesota.
DORIAN’S DEVASTATING IMPACT
At least 70,000 people were left homeless by the hurricane, which on Sept. 1 planted itself in the northern Bahamanian islands and stormed in place for at least 24 hours. As measured by sustained winds, Dorian ties with the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 as the most intense hurricane to ever make landfall off the Atlantic Ocean.
Working with a fellow student, Grace last month designed the fundraising website bahama-mn.org, which aims to get the word out about the devastation in the northern island communities of Abaco and Grand Bahama.
Grace, who sits on the Hill-Murray student council, convinced school leaders to host a dodgeball tournament, which raised $800. She’s also volunteered to organize donations of clothing and non-perishables at a warehouse Rosario is renting for the effort.
Grace’s friend Gabrielle Garcia, a sophomore at St. Paul Central High School who once had her tonsils removed by Rosario, is selling $2 “Bahamas MN” stickers to her classmates.
On Oct. 12, the LaVigne and Garcia families joined Minnesotan leaders of Caribbean descent at the St. Paul home of Rosario and her husband, Ramsey County Assessor Luis Rosario, for a “Feed Your Heart” dinner fundraiser, where Grace sold T-shirts to promote the cause.
At 12, Grace Lavigne went to Dr. Inell Rosario of St. Paul (Andros ENT+Sleep Center of Inver Grove Heights) with bad ear infections. Rosario removed a benign tumor — and became like a member of the family. When Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas, Grace had to pay it forward. pic.twitter.com/yfO2MqlmSz
— Frederick Melo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) October 13, 2019
BAHAMAS-TO-MINNESOTA SINCE 1890s
With plates loaded with ceviche, fried plantains, rum cake and pernil, or slow-cooked pork, members recalled the many paths that brought residents of the Bahamas to Minnesota beginning with farm families in the 1890s.
St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict both have long-standing relationships with the Bahamas, and this year have enrolled nearly 70 students from the island nation between them. That’s a record number, and presidents of both colleges routinely visit the island to keep the relationship alive.
The colleges and study body rallied after Hurricane Dorian to raise more than $44,000 as of Oct. 4.
Rosario, for her part, was born in Nassau, Bahamas, and came to the U.S. to attend Macalester College in 1983 on a scholarship that was supplemented by the Bahamas government. She runs Andros ENT and Sleep Center, Andros Audiology in Inver Grove Heights and Andros MedSpa in Mendota Heights.
Rosario left Oct. 17 to accompany the items down to the Bahamas herself and see that they’re distributed to those who need them.
BAHAMAS FUNDRAISER
For information on how to help, go online to https://bahama-mn.org.
Donald Steele, one of the donor-organizers who attended Rosario’s fundraising dinner, said his family is Jamaican, but Dorian left an impact well beyond the Bahamas, both physically and emotionally. The Jamaica Minnesota Organization is one of several St. Paul-area groups with Caribbean ties that have stepped up.
“With a little shift in direction, it could be Jamaica, it could be the Bahamas, it could be Antigua,” said Steele, who lives in St. Paul. “We’re all so close.”
When a massive hurricane hit Jamaica in 1988, his brother Jerry Steele — a Vietnam veteran — swung into action and escorted two C-130 military planes full of donations from across Minnesota to the island nation, where he was greeted by the prime minister.
“We had people all over the state helping out,” said Jerry Steele, of Brooklyn Park. “We filled armories. (Gov.) Rudy Perpich, he stepped up to the plate.”